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The year was 1926. It had only been two years since Tullahoma’s downtown streets were paved and only three years after the city’s first high school senior class graduated. Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States, Camp Peay National Guard Camp was established outside Tullahoma, and W.J. Davidson replaced R.L. Robertson as Tullahoma’s mayor. Tullahoma had a brand new brick post office at the northwest corner of W. Grundy and N. Atlantic Streets, and according to one source, locals still had some say in the design of new federal buildings.

It’s probably not coincidence that the establishment of Camp Peay and the building of a new U.S. Post Office happened at the same time. Likely, mail coming and going to the expected influx of people at Camp Peay and the camp itself would have overwhelmed the old storefront post office in the middle of the 100 block of N. Atlantic Street.

The Federal Architect magazine from October 1930 shows a photo of the Tullahoma post office in an article about architectural style, wherein the author is advocating giving respect to traditional style, but modernizing the style at the same time. He states, “In other words, they show the thing we hope the whole architectural field will be striving for – the Moderne traditionalized, the Traditional modernized.” In the photo’s caption, it is mentioned that “At the last moment the citizens of this town decided they preferred brick to stucco. This unusual brick texture in rich buff and cream was produced by using part of the bricks flatwise.”

As seen in the postcard image here, the stucco would have fit well with the partial tile roof look, offering a southwestern style. By the time Larry Nee, Sr. took the other two photos in the mid-1960s, the post office had been expanded toward the west and a dock added. One of his photos shows construction in the dock area underway. The buildings across the street in that photo are not present today, having been replaced by Traders Bank’s parking lot.

Larry Nee, Sr. photos provided by Sharon Nee Goodman.

Do you have some old Tullahoma photos and accompanying stories to share? You can contact me at alanmayes@lighttube.net.